Slashdot Mirror
Airport Security vs. Cyborg Steve Mann
CompaniaHill writes: "The New York Times (free reg, etc.) has a story on University of Toronto engineering-professor-turned-cyborg Steve Mann's recent run-in with humorless airport security. Apparently his preplanning and documents were sufficient to get him through the Toronto airport security on his way to St. John's in Newfoundland, but not sufficient to get him through the St. John's airport security on his way home. Two days later, after strip-searches, forced removal of implants and x-raying and other ill-handling of delicate hardware, he returned home in a wheelchair. Mann's lawyer is attempting to recover the cost of the $56,800 in damaged hardware, while his doctors are studying his body's response to the removal of the implants, some of which he has had for over twenty years."
Welcome to Canada... bend over please.
crazy dynamite monkey
my god! what good are cyborgs if they can't even contend with simple airport security officers?
darth vader would be ashamed!
Just raise the taxes on crack.
Wow, I can totally cripple someone far more learned than me _and_ make seven dollars an hour! Woo-hoo!
Seriously, though, next time, take another route home. Zeppelin or something.
--saint
A penile implant, with sufficent force, can be used as a weapon.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
In a related story, Britney Spears announced that she would never perform in Canada again.
Don't these airport security people watch TV? There are only but a few doctors in Starfleet who could successfully re-assimilate a Borg back into society yet these yahoos try to do it on their own, and without the aid of at least an EMH Mark I.
'Same speed C but faster'
Some airport security people are pretty dumb -- but I just can't picture one dumb enough to let a Sith Lord board!
Man his "late 90s" pic makes him look like a dork. If he's going to go all crypto-cyborg he really needs to use better shades.
Anyway, he's obviously a dangerous spy. Just look, in the first image, he's waring a t-shirt with a MAP OF CHINA what more evidence do you need!?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Airport security is afraid someone is going to knit an Afghan...
... can you imagine anyone in their right mind letting someone looking like this through security?r es/99.07.ma nn.jpg
http://www.media.mit.edu/physics/pictu
The article is short. Registration is long
...but not while the evil days come not.
Ira Howard, please phone home!
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Actually she's pretty cool. She even helped us out in the ECE1766 course when we stayed out all night creating lightspace vectors of the UofT campus.
Incidentally, I think they have a lot of cybersex together cause Steve gets really tired and can't get it up after lugging around his gear all day.
I do - if you've followed his research, you'd know that his glasses continually project data streams onto his eyes.
(example - he walks up to a price display at a store twiddles with his fingers, and sees, projected into his vision, the price of the same object at the competing store.)
If he's worn such glasses for a long period of time, and if he's doing some other sorts of tricks with prisms and mirrors to allow the merging of eyeball-data with bitstream-data before it hits his retina, the loss of the glasses could very well hamper his ability to navigate on foot.
(I'm reminded of an old experiment in depth perception where they gave subjects glasses with prisms that shifted their "vision" 30 degrees to the right. The first day, everyone was bumping into the left-hand side of every door they tried to walk through, as you might expect. After a few weeks, their brains "retrained" themselves to see the world with the glasses on, and everything was fine. Then they took the glasses off and everyone was bumping into the right-hand side of things until their brains "unlearned" the glasses.)
> In my opinion, the truly interesting part of this article is that once his technological aids were removed, this guy ceased to be able to complete basic tasks like walking. This has significant ramifications for wearable computing. Is it augmented reality? Or is it a crutch without which he can't function?
"Yes and yes."
And that's precisely the kind of stuff he's researching.
(Once my snowshoes were removed, I ceased to be able to walk in 4-foot-deep snow. Are my snowshoes a mobility-augmentor or a crutch?)
Does this guy EVER take a SHOWER?!?!?!
-Russ
Me
He neglected to mention of course, that Betty is blind, has a speech imediment, and weighs 400 lbs.
Edith Keeler Must Die
enter borg
"We are borg resistance is futile, you will be..."
Airport Security: "Allright buddy, we already went through this before, he didnt get through either, now lets get you to the back room, for a.. personal inspection, and we dont want any bitching if blood spurts out.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
Idiot guard: "We need you to pass through the x-ray machine."
It's a metal detector - not an x-ray machine.
Congratulations, you just qualified for a job as an airport security screener.
Knitting needles?!?! Why, she could have been
knitting an.... AFGHAN!
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Agreed. Mann may well be a jackass.
So, is there something in the Canadian constitution against that?
Article XVII, subsection C, Clause 256 -
Any person deemed to be a jackass, as defined by Slashdot shall be subjected to physical harm and have any mobile computing devices damaged by persons of low intelligence, authority and wages.
"The best part? I became an ordained minister while not wearing pants." -- CleverNickName